Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Hello, I'm glad that you could join us in Defenders today.

In our discussion of the doctrine of the last things, we've been talking about the second coming of Christ.

But of course, up until this time in human history, no Christian has lived until the time of the

Parusia, or of Christ's second coming. Rather, every Christian up to this point has been ushered into the

afterlife, not by Christ's return, but by death. So we want to ask ourselves now, what happens to

people when they die? People who do not live until the return of Christ. Let's talk first

about the biblical view of what happens when a person dies. Here, it's important to understand

the notion of progressive revelation. Progressive revelation means that God has not given to

humankind all of his truth that he wants us to know at once, but has revealed it gradually

over time in increasing detail and fullness.

Examples of progressive revelation in Scripture would be first the doctrine of the Trinity.

When you read the Old Testament, you would never guess that God is three and one. There seems to be a single person

who is God in the Old Testament. There is monotheism, and there doesn't seem to be a plurality of

persons in the Godhead. But with the revelation in Jesus and the development of the New Testament,

God's nature is more fully disclosed, and we've come to learn that God is, in fact,

three and one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A second example would be the plan of salvation.

In the Old Testament, salvation seems to belong only to the Jews. Yet in the New Testament,

Paul speaks of the mystery hidden for ages in God, and that mystery is to reconcile

Jews and Gentiles together in Christ. He says that this mystery, hidden for ages in God,

is now fully disclosed through the teaching of the apostles to the church.

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